Previous Paper Prize WinnersGraduate Student Paper PrizeThe MMLA congratulates the 2023 winner of the Graduate Student Paper Prize: Vivian Lei of Columbia University. Her paper, "Writing Affect In/Through Body Parts: The Aggressive Affectivity of Melancholia in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée," is a comparative study between Korean American writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's poetry and the anatomical exhibit of Chang and Eng Bunker at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Her research delves into the history of anatomical science and sheds light on its intricate connections with visual representations of race and racialized bodies. This historical context not only sheds light on Cha's recourse to anatomical aesthetics in Dictée. Yet, Cha's work, in appropriating the representational logic of scientific racism, constructs a different affective and cultural politics that actively imagines biology as the ground for Asian American racial coalition. Vivian Lei is a first-year Ph.D. student from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her research interests include contemporary Asian American literary and cultural productions, affect theory, and theories of race/racialization. Previous Winners
Undergraduate Student Paper PrizeThe MMLA congratulates the 2023 winner of the Undergraduate Student Paper Prize: Paige Parker of Saint Mary's College. Her paper, "Poetry and Democracy: Ada Limón and the Role of the Poet Laureate," examines how the Poet Laureate of the United States attempts to uphold democracy by serving as the poet of the people. By using postcolonial and critical race studies as tools for the intersectional analyses of oppression, this project addresses how the current PLOTUS Ada Limón speaks to the widely held democratic values of working towards racial justice and reaffirming Latinx and indigenous identities. Consequently, this project demonstrates that Limón interrogates the nation by not only critiquing its political structure but by drawing attention to the inherent hypocrisy of the United States, a country that promotes inclusion and accessibility while ignoring the history of power imbalance and grave injustices against people of color and women. Previous Winners
|